What's in a prose?

"Writing at any level is an amateur activity," according to professor James Richardson '71, the author of seven books and former director of the University's Program in Creative Writing from 1981 until 1990.

At Princeton, creative writing can be as serious as composing poetry for an official workshop with a prizewinning author or as informal as writing unofficially for a publication.

These official and unofficial arenas frequently overlap. Creative writing classes often attract writers from student publications, and student publications often print pieces written for writing classes.

"The teaching style in creative writing classes is largely student-driven; The majority of class time is devoted to students critiquing each others' work," writes Jonathan Rosen '05, who has taken several workshops.

"People don't need to take workshops," Richardson said. "Because a workshop is meant to teach you to work outside a workshop."

His advice for young writers is to avoid typical pitfalls such as "not reading enough, having bad models and creating tight little abstractions."

Students at Princeton have ample opportunity to work outside a workshop without feeling on their own. Literary magazines abound on campus, whether it's the venerable Nassau Literary Review, the perennial Nassau Weekly or the newcomers, Greenlight, limbic and others. A Spanish language review is also reportedly in the works.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins '06 has taken four workshops in Creative Writing. Now one of three editors-in-chief of the Nassau Weekly, Jacobs-Jenkins was formerly the publication's literary editor and a staff member of the Nassau Literary Review, an unaffiliated annual journal. According to Jacobs-Jenkins, both publications have an "extensive editing process" from which both authors and editors benefit.

As a literary editor, Jacobs-Jenkins solicited submissions from people he knew were creative writers. Many of the writers on campus know each other from the Creative Writing Program's workshops.

The Nassau Literary Review has one of the most extensive selection and editing processes for literary publications on campus. Margaret Johnson '05, the prose editor, collated the 500 pages of fiction submissions this year. She says the process is "fantastic" because it is anonymous and allows work to be judged by a large number of people. The submissions, whose authors' names have been removed, are split into two packets, each of which is read by half of the magazine's staff. After an initial selection, a final meeting determines the dozen or so pieces that make it in. Johnson and her staff look for pieces that have "a clear voice, organization, something a little different and a fear of cliché."

An accepted piece is almost never published as-is. Johnson assigns a staff member to each writer and a lengthy process of revisions begins. As in the Creative Writing Program, students' work is critiqued and improvements suggested, though it is by other students and not Pulitzer Prizewinners. The content of another magazine, limbic, comes entirely from workshops run on campus by the contributing editor.

According to Richardson, the Creative Writing professors have discussed collecting students' work in a published review similar to the Lit. However, he cited concerns over "making a group of work official" and the "creepiness" of professors selecting the pieces. Student readings already serve the function of a review, he added.

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Johnson hopes that the Creative Writing program and campus publications could work together more closely, but she recognizes that the professors in the program are very busy and that much produced by students for workshops ends up in the magazines anyway.

Not everyone takes such a rosy view of the literary climate on campus. Brian Cochrane '06 was the editor of Kruller, a magazine he admits is now "defunct." Kruller was an alternative magazine which Cochrane contrasts with the "formalized tradition" of the other literary magazines and of the Creative Writing program. As editor, he looked for pieces "with different voices" but said he had no expectations otherwise.

He felt out-of-place in the program's poetry workshops, because he himself is a performance poet. However, he eventually found his creative identity in the Princeton Atelier, a special performance workshop.

A student who wishes to remain anonymous said that she had a similar experience in the workshops. Since her poetry was written in a nontraditional style, she said that the professor "was only able to make a superficial effort to understand [her] work." "In fact, the only comment on my first poem was a giant question mark," she continues, and said the professor implied she was "trying to be weird."

The Creative Writing program does stress literary tradition, perhaps at the expense of radical innovation. Both Richardson and professor Paul Muldoon, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, underscore the importance of reading because "the processes of writing and reading are indistinguishable," Muldoon said.

However, though it has a different role to play in each professor's class, literary tradition is not slavishly adhered to. "It's the work itself that determines how it is to be read. It sets the terms. One then tries to establish if it meets its own standards," Muldoon said.

Richardson himself objects to the Creative Writing Program's admissions process because the application requires samples of a student's work. "It's hard to say that someone doesn't have potential [and] what's to say that someone won't improve," he said.

Though a few student writers feel alienated by the Creative Writing program and the Nassau Literary Review, many thrive in the vibrant workshop environment shared by both.

"At Princeton we have a unique and wonderful situation, because an outsider would need to call Joyce Carol Oates' agent to talk to her — here we just go to her office hours," Johnson said.